A New Test Rig for Electrically Actuated Landing Gear and Brake of a Small Transport Aircraft

Performing highly representative tests of aircraft equipment is a critical feature for gaining utmost confidence on their ability to perform flawlessly in flight under the entire spectrum of operating conditions. This can also contribute to accelerate the certification process of a new equipment.

A research project (E-LISA) was performed in recent years, as part of the European funded Clean Sky 2 framework, with the objective of building an innovative facility for testing an electrically actuated landing gear and brake for a small air transport. The project eventually led to the development and construction of an Iron Bird able to reproduce in a realistic and comprehensive way a full variety of landing test cases consistent with certification specifications and landing histories available in the repository of the airframer. The Iron Bird that was eventually developed is a multi-functional intelligent and easy reconfigurable facility integrating hardware and software allowing to perform a full verification and validation of an electrically actuated landing gear and brake over the representative operating conditions, and under normal, degraded and faulty conditions.